For anyone who is trying to keep up with the extremely rapid developments in the biodiesel industry, the second edition of Biodiesel: Growing a New Energy Economy is an invaluable aid. The breathtaking speed with which biodiesel has gained acceptance in the marketplace in the past few years has been exceeded only by the proliferation of biodiesel production facilities around the United States--and the world--only to confront new social and environmental challenges and criticisms.

The international survey of the biodiesel industry has been expanded from 40 to more than 80 countries, reflecting the spectacular growth of the industry around the world. This section also tracks the dramatic shifts in the fortunes of the industry that have taken place in some of these nations. The detailed chapters that cover the industry in the United States have also been substantially rewritten to keep abreast of its many new developments and explosive domestic growth.

An expanded section on small-scale, local biodiesel production has been added to better represent this small but growing part of the industry. Another new section has been added to more fully explore the increasingly controversial issues of deforestation and food versus fuel, as well as GMO crops. The second edition concludes with updated views on where the industry is headed in the years to come from some of its key players.

REVIEWS AND PRAISE

"Finally, the book we've been looking for. Greg Pahl's new biodiesel book offers a comprehensive review of all things veggie oil powered. From the history of the diesel engine to the development of the biodiesel industry, past, current, and future. This is the ultimate primer."--Rob Elam, Propel Project

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Greg Pahl

Greg Pahl is the author of numerous books on energy and also writes for Mother Earth News and various other publications on biodiesel, wind power, wood heat, solar energy, heat pumps, electric cars, and a wide range of other topics related to living in a post-carbon world.

His books include Power from the People: How to Organize, Finance, and Launch Local Energy Projects (2012, Chelsea Green), Biodiesel: Growing a New Energy Economy (2005, Chelsea Green), Natural Home Heating: The Complete Guide to Renewable Energy Options (2003, Chelsea Green), The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Saving the Environment (2001, Macmillan/Alpha Books), and The Unofficial Guide to Beating Debt (2000, IDG Books).

Pahl has been involved in environmental issues for more than twenty-five years. In the 1970s he lived off the grid in a home in Vermont with a wind turbine atop an 80-foot tower that provided for his electrical needs. He is a founding member of the Vermont Biofuels Association as well as the Acorn Renewable Energy Co-op. Pahl attended the University of Vermont and was a military intelligence officer in the US Army during the Vietnam War.

INTERVIEWS AND ARTICLES

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Over 90 percent of US power generation comes from large, centralized, highly polluting, nonrenewable sources of energy. It is delivered through long, brittle transmission lines, and then is squandered through inefficiency and waste. But it doesn't have to be that way. Communities can indeed produce their own local, renewable energy.

Power from the People explores how homeowners, co-ops, nonprofit institutions, governments, and businesses are putting power in the hands of local communities through distributed energy programs and energy-efficiency measures.

Using examples from around the nation - and occasionally from around the world - Greg Pahl explains how to plan, organize, finance, and launch community-scale energy projects that harvest energy from sun, wind, water, and earth. He also explains why community power is a necessary step on the path to energy security and community resilience - particularly as we face peak oil, cope with climate change, and address the need to transition to a more sustainable future.

This book - the second in the Chelsea Green Publishing Company and Post Carbon Institute's Community Resilience Series - also profiles numerous communitywide initiatives that can be replicated elsewhere.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Al Gore's summer blockbuster An Inconvenient Truth, and crude oil prices soaring to all-time highs, more people than ever know the truth about our oil addiction. Global warming is here. M. King Hubbert's oil peak is fast approaching (or may already have arrived). The secret's out: fossil fuel reserves are dwindling and popular interest has created the need for accessible, realistic solutions.

The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook, a clear-eyed view of the critical situation we face, offers ways out. Greg Pahl examines energy technologies currently available and homes in on renewable energy strategies that can be adopted by individuals and communities. Such cooperative initiatives have been common in Europe for years and are beginning to gain a foothold in the US. Each chapter focuses on a different renewable energy category--solar, wind, water, biomass, liquid biofuels, and geothermal--then reviews their advantages and disadvantages and desccribes numerous examples of successful, proven local initiatives.

The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook is an eloquent appeal for community and regional action to initiate an array of solutions to energy needs until now controlled by large, distant utilities and consortiums. It is time to take back control of the energy and environmental challenges ahead; this book will help people do just that. It is a handbook for anyone ready to take the first steps towards a more sustainable future.

Millions of Americans are demanding that all levels of government—local, state, and federal—take immediate and effective action to fight climate change. But there’s a big problem. Hundreds of policy ideas are floating about, and many of them aren’t very good. It’s quite possible that bad climate policy will result, and that many years will then be lost before real emission reductions occur.

We can’t afford to let that happen. That’s why this citizen’s guide is so important. It explains in clear and simple language what different climate policies will do—and what they won’t do. It tells you who’s behind the policies, who’d pay for them, and who’d profit. It strips away the spin and tells you the key facts you need to know.

In a very real sense, this guide ushers in the next stage of the global-warming debate. In the first stage, we discussed the problem. In the next stage, we must choose solutions. Should we adopt a carbon tax? A carbon cap? A trading system that allows companies to “offset” their emissions by paying others to plant trees?

This guide examines these proposals and many others. It’s essential reading for anyone who wants to stop climate change before it’s too late.

How to harvest water and nutrients, select drought-tolerant plants, and create natural diversity

Because climatic uncertainty has now become "the new normal," many farmers, gardeners and orchard-keepers in North America are desperately seeking ways to adapt their food production to become more resilient in the face of such "global weirding." This book draws upon the wisdom and technical knowledge from desert farming traditions all around the world to offer time-tried strategies for:

Building greater moisture-holding capacity and nutrients in soils

Protecting fields from damaging winds, drought, and floods

Harvesting water from uplands to use in rain gardens and terraces filled with perennial crops

Delecting fruits, nuts, succulents, and herbaceous perennials that are best suited to warmer, drier climates

Gary Paul Nabhan is one of the world's experts on the agricultural traditions of arid lands. For this book he has visited indigenous and traditional farmers in the Gobi Desert, the Arabian Peninsula, the Sahara Desert, and Andalusia, as well as the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Painted deserts of North America, to learn firsthand their techniques and designs aimed at reducing heat and drought stress on orchards, fields, and dooryard gardens. This practical book also includes colorful "parables from the field" that exemplify how desert farmers think about increasing the carrying capacity and resilience of the lands and waters they steward. It is replete with detailed descriptions and diagrams of how to implement these desert-adapted practices in your own backyard, orchard, or farm.

This unique book is useful not only for farmers and permaculturists in the arid reaches of the Southwest or other desert regions. Its techniques and prophetic vision for achieving food security in the face of climate change may well need to be implemented across most of North America over the next half-century, and are already applicable in most of the semiarid West, Great Plains, and the U.S. Southwest and adjacent regions of Mexico.

AL GORE: Green Energy by 2018 (7/17 Speech)

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New buildings can be designed to be solar oriented, naturally heated and cooled, naturally lit and ventilated, and made with renewable, sustainable materials—no matter the location or climate.

In this comprehensive overview of passive solar design, two of America’s solar pioneers give homeowners, architects, designers, and builders the keys to successfully harnessing the sun and maximizing climate resources for heating, cooling, ventilation, and daylighting.

Bainbridge and Haggard draw upon examples from their own experiences, as well as those of others, of more than three decades to offer both overarching principles as well as the details and formulas needed to successfully design a more comfortable, healthy, and secure place in which to live, laugh, dance, and be comfortable. Even if the power goes off.

Passive Solar Architecture also discusses “greener” and more-sustainable building materials and how to use them, and explores the historical roots of green design that have made possible buildings that produce more energy and other resources than they use.

The availability of clean, renewable power is without question going to be the defining challenge and goal of the 21st century, and wind will lead the way.

Internationally acclaimed wind energy expert Paul Gipe is as soberly critical of past energy mistakes as he is convincingly optimistic about the future. The overwhelming challenge of transforming our world from one of fossil carbon to one of clean power seems daunting at best—and paralyzingly impractical at worst. Wind Energy Basics offers a solution.

Wind power can realistically not only replace the lion’s share of oil-, coal-, and naturalgas– fired electrical plants in the U.S., but also can add enough extra power capacity to allow for most of the cars in the nation to run on electricity. Gipe explains why such a startlingly straightforward solution is eminently doable and can be accomplished much sooner than previously thought—and will have the capacity to resuscitate small and regional economies.

Wind Energy Basics offers a how-to for home-based wind applications, with advice on which wind turbines to choose and which to avoid. He guides wind-energy installers through considerations such as renewable investment strategies and gives cautionary tales of wind applications gone wrong. And for the activist, he suggests methods of prodding federal, state, and provincial governments to promote energy independence.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Al Gore's summer blockbuster An Inconvenient Truth, and crude oil prices soaring to all-time highs, more people than ever know the truth about our oil addiction. Global warming is here. M. King Hubbert's oil peak is fast approaching (or may already have arrived). The secret's out: fossil fuel reserves are dwindling and popular interest has created the need for accessible, realistic solutions.

The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook, a clear-eyed view of the critical situation we face, offers ways out. Greg Pahl examines energy technologies currently available and homes in on renewable energy strategies that can be adopted by individuals and communities. Such cooperative initiatives have been common in Europe for years and are beginning to gain a foothold in the US. Each chapter focuses on a different renewable energy category--solar, wind, water, biomass, liquid biofuels, and geothermal--then reviews their advantages and disadvantages and desccribes numerous examples of successful, proven local initiatives.

The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook is an eloquent appeal for community and regional action to initiate an array of solutions to energy needs until now controlled by large, distant utilities and consortiums. It is time to take back control of the energy and environmental challenges ahead; this book will help people do just that. It is a handbook for anyone ready to take the first steps towards a more sustainable future.

Using a wood-burning stove effectively is both an art and a science. In this friendly, comprehensive guide, chartered forester and woodfuel expert Will Rolls talks the reader through the theory and practice of getting the best results from their stove. From finding the fuel and seasoning it to lighting the stove and operating it cleanly, this book describes the best techniques for looking after your log stove.

The Log Book covers log suppliers, avoiding too much smoke and ash, checking fuel quality, and picking the best wood for your fire. This second edition includes: